What Would Jesus Do? Maybe take a few tips from Tom Lehman

Tom Lehman, as Sam Torrance famously remarked at another Ryder Cup, calls himself a man of God.

It was the American's part in his countrymen's enchanting victory charge across the 17th green at Brookline in 1999 that prompted Torrance to wonder out loud about the extent to which he had permitted his Christian values to reach into his golf game, and seven years on, with Lehman now US captain, focus on the role the Almighty plays in his team seems more apposite than ever.

While one would hesitate to describe Tom Lehman's politics as opaque - he has referred to Bill Clinton as "that draft-dodging baby-killer" - his spiritual leanings are clearer still. As Sports Illustrated recently noted, "there's a religious undercurrent to this US team", a judgment arguably on a par with the observation that the Pope is Catholic.

There aren't any Papists on this year's US side, of course. The likes of Stewart Cink and Scott Verplank - both captain's picks, incidentally - are very much Christians of the born-again variety in a team that travelled to County Kildare with an official chaplain. This minister, Larry Moody, is both the PGA Tour chaplain and president of Search Ministries, which he describes enticingly as "a parachurch organisation that assists adults in the process of lifestyle evangelism".

One such fortunate adult is Team US vice-captain Loren Roberts, whom Larry baptised 13 years ago, in the swimming pool at Disneyworld's Polynesian Resort - an image which reminds us that evangelism has a way to go in the ritual pageantry stakes before it can measure up to, say, Russian Orthodoxy. As for Lehman's other vice-captain, exchange the sign of peace with Corey Pavin, who was born Jewish but became a born-again Christian in 1991.

So, everyone seems to be singing off the same hymnsheet - though not literally, as Lehman was at pains to stress when asked earlier this week if the team held regular prayer meetings.

"There's guys of faith who are in our group," he conceded, "but we're not holding Sunday school. We're not singing hymns and things like that."

It's fair to say, however, that this stalwart of tour Bible study groups has not felt moved to stay his hand entirely on faith-based captaincy. He has commissioned the former Ryder Cup captain Byron Nelson - who has since followed Jesus into the carpentry business - to create a wooden keepsake for each player, carved with a verse from Psalm 18 relating to the battle of David and Goliath.

"With your help I can advance against a troop," reads this item, which Tiger Woods may or may not be bothering to carry round in his pocket. "With my God I can scale a wall."

To underline his decision to secure divine backing for the US challenge, Lehman has been spotted this week wearing a bracelet emblazoned with the letters WWJD, which Godless readers may care to know stands for "What Would Jesus Do?" What indeed? You'd like to think he'd have been a little more restrained on the 17th at Brookline, but suspect he'd have succumbed to a rare flash of that temper of his had he run into Brett Wetterich yesterday. It's tricky to second-guess the mind of God.

Though not for Lehman, it seems. "God has definitely used golf in a great way over the last several years," he opined recently, and there's something madly reassuring about that "definitely". While the rest of us wrestle with questions such as "How can a benevolent God permit the existence of the Sherlock Holmes outfits the US team wore on arrival in Ireland?" it takes a captain to state as fact that the architect of the universe is able to telegraph his plans for humanity via the medium of the PGA Tour.

But then, Lehman has an eye for a story arc. Consider his verdict on his own professional journey, which he makes a feature of his public speaking engagements for organisations such as Youth for Christ. "I went from doing things for God's glory and trying to be His kind of guy," he explains, "to trying to make money and be successful, just for myself. It took my being knocked way down to realise that God wanted me to be His man."

It would be the height of churlishness, of course, as his team's caddies lug the fish-symbol-bedecked bags around the K Club this weekend, to recall the reaction of the renowned commentator Henry Longhurst to a victory speech in which an American golfer declared that God had helped him on every shot. It was a shame, Longhurst mused, that God didn't have anything better to do with his time.